Been almost a year since I last posted to this thread and 10 years since I started it. Seemed like a good time for an update. I haven't changed too much with the trailer since my last post from last year but it's probably getting a pretty serious overhaul this summer. The past 10 years of use have been awesome and it's been great to have the room to haul all the gear for my family of 6 on extended outings.
By my estimation I've put approximately 80k miles on the trailer since building it, with a major portion of those miles being offroad. I'm not one that travels very slow when offroad, in fact most people that have come on one of our trips have commented about the pace and that we move significantly faster than they ever do when they do their own trips. So that means the trailer has had a lot of rough, hard, and fast miles. As a homebuilt trailer, and my first major welding project I've been really pleased that it's been completely trouble free it's entire life....until the last trip.
As per usual we were traveling very quickly on a very rough, rocky road in southern Utah. We were 50+ miles from the nearest paved road. I started hearing a clicking sound that was new. I stopped to check it and found that I had broken one of the leaf spring shackle hangers off the frame. Because the trailer has been so reliable over the years, I don't really carry spares or other things in case of a trailer breakdown. So it took a bit of creativity to get it fixed.
But first a few pics from earlier in the trip before the trailer broke.
IMG_2338 by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_2436 by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_2452 by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_2483 by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_2510 by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
Back to the breakdown.... Remember when I said this trailer was my first major welding project. I've improved quite a bit as a welder of the past decade since building the trailer but as you can see from this photo the shackle hanger did not have great penetration on the frame. Honestly I'm quite surprised this hadn't broken long before.
Untitled by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
My son and I got to work on the fix while my wife made lunch for all of us. You'll notice in this picture that the box of the trailer is welded directly to the frame. This presented a problem because the only way we could fix the shackle hanger was to somehow clamp it to the frame but there was no way to clamp it to the top surface of the frame.
Untitled by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
Untitled by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
I had my cordless drill but in the rush to leave home I forgot drill bits. But I had a chisel. So we used the chisel to punch two holes in the side skin of the trailer and two more in the floor skin of the trailer so that we had a way to tie around the frame rail. I used a small prybar through the hanger and a generous number of zip ties around the frame and prybar to hold the hanger in position against the frame. For good measure we slathered the hanger and zip ties with JB Weld and used a ratchet strap from one spring to the other to help hold it in place laterally.
Untitled by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
Definitely not the nicest trail fix but was the best we could do with what we had with us in the remote location. The only thing that matters with a trail fix is if it works to get you off the trail. This one ended up working great as we backtracked 50 miles down the same rough road we had just come down. We got into a small town after dark but found a shop the next morning that let us re weld the hanger to the frame. The "real" fix took us all of about 15 minutes and is now stronger than it was originally.
Untitled by
Adam Tolman, on Flickr
This whole experience has hastened the refresh that has been planned for a while. I wasn't planning to redo the suspension because it had always worked but now I'm looking at changing it up. At the moment, I'm debating sticking with leaf springs but using some longer ones that I have. Or, building a custom trailing arm/panhard setup with airbags. We'll see how ambitious I get when I start digging into it.
IMG_8498 by Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_8599 by Adam Tolman, on Flickr
IMG_8641 by Adam Tolman, on Flickr
